Here’s the latest episode of Patshow as we wrap up the Jets game — all the best tweets from around the interweb, a breakdown of one of the defense’s biggest breakdowns and plenty more Pats fun!
Film Review: Three Terrible Third Downs From the First Drive
The Patriots defense was supposed to have turned a corner after winning in Tampa Bay. Instead they came out ten days later and had one hell of an ugly drive to start the game against the Jets. Yes, they partially righted the ship and came through on the final drive so it wasn’t as bad as we’ve seen this season, but it’s hard to play much worse on third down than they did on that opening drive.
With any more drives like this one the Patriots betting odds for the next game will drop like a rock facing last year’s MVP Matt Ryan. Third down is where games are won or lost and in this contest, especially out of the gate, the Patriots were out of sync and overthinking.
Let’s take a look at three of the third down conversions on that opening drive and try to figure out what was going on out there.
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Is 2015 Dion Lewis Finally Back?
The Cardiac Pats ground out another win in their fourth-straight game in which the game hung in the balance on the final play. A lackluster effort overall marred the play of Dion Lewis, who ran all over the Jets front. Sunday marked Lewis’s first real impact in the 2017 season, as prior to this game, his season high in snaps was just 18, and had averaged just 6.5 touches per game. However, watching him on Sunday, it was hard not to harken back to the Dion Lewis we saw in the 2015 season, when he seized control of the Patriots backfield with elite performance after elite performance.
It is easy to forget just how incredible Lewis’s 2015 season was prior to tearing his ACL. To preface, it is obviously difficult to discern whether Lewis can ever regain the level of play he displayed in 2015, but if he has, I firmly believe he deserves a far heavier workload, and his stats back up my belief.
Pats Posits: The Luxury of a Maddening Victory
Doesn’t it feel like this is the year that NFL parity finally kicked in? Yes, the Patriots are 4-2 and we think we have plenty to complain about, but when you look around the league it’s hard to make any sense of it all. There were conference-altering injuries like Aaron Rodgers breaking his collarbone. There was the final undefeated team falling. And there was yet another week where some teams are up, some teams are down and no one knows who’s really good or bad.
Simply put, ironing out firm Super Bowl favorites at this point is near impossible. Every team has flaws and no one is safe from huge injuries. So before you jump off the bridge about the Patriots’ defense, just take a deep breath and realize that despite their flaws, there aren’t any flawless teams and well, we still have Tom Brady. You know, the winningest quarterback of all time in all regards now.
I still give the Pats a puncher’s chance against anyone, especially this year and that counts for a lot.
Here are the Posits on what was once again a maddening victory, which are quickly becoming the hallmark of the 2017 Pats.
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Inconsistent Patriots Hang On Again to Beat Jets
The Patriots hung on once again to beat the Jets 24-17 to move into first place in the AFC East for the first time in 2017.
It was another up-and-down performance for the Pats that closely mirrored what we saw against the Buccaneers 10 days earlier. One drive they’re forcing three-and-outs or marching down the field, the next they’re getting gashed by big plays with wide open receivers or going three-and-out themselves.
It’s a maddening display of inconsistency that has become the hallmark of this edition of the Pats. What drives you nuts is that they show they’re capable of being dominant at times on both sides of the ball. But in crunchtime neither side of the ball seems to deliver with authority.
But deliver they did even if there is plenty to pick apart.
Still, a win is a win, especially a divisional win on the road. The Patriots definitely still have a long way to go, maybe longer than they’ve ever had to go in the middle of October, but four wins buys you some time.
Here’s how it all went down.
TOM BRADY LEAN BACK pic.twitter.com/RKAfIIlpe2
— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) October 15, 2017
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Patriots Pregame Meal: Surprise Absences Throw Late Twist
After what felt like two weeks off the Patriots are back to take on the Jets today. I gotta admit it, I miss Rex Ryan still, he made the season so much more interesting and his defenses usually gave Brady and the offense some trouble. I guess I won’t miss those parts, we’ll see what the young Jets can do today. I expect they’ll play with their hair on fire with nothing to lose, which might make it interesting early, but I expect the Pats to pull away in the second half.
Certainly hurts that they’ll be without Bilal Powell, who was the one multi-threat weapon that I thought could really get the Pats on their heels. Josh McCown might play up to Bill Belichick’s lofty expectations but ultimately this is a traditional offense and those haven’t really seemed to be a problem for the Patriots defense.
Yesterday was a crazy day of Patriots news, with Harvey Langi getting into a car accident and Stephon Gilmore mysteriously turning up with a concussion. Obviously I hope Langi and his wife are okay, I drive by the area where his accident happened all the time and it’s scary to imagine getting plowed into like that. On a football level it would seem like Langi season could very well be over which isn’t exactly a devastating blow for the team but it’s just another injury that thins depth, hurts a promising player’s development and is yet another linebacker down.
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Patriots Gameplan: Week 6 at New York Jets
It felt like a lackluster Patriots off week, didn’t it? The Pats had an okay with last Thursday night, but it was so middle of the road that it sparked neither the “Pats are dead” nor the “Pats are Super Bowl favorites” crowds.
Sure there were plenty of complaints like there usually are. I think those were best summed up when I was listening to Dale and Holley for a minute and they were complaining about the offensive line. Then there was a pause and Holley mentioned that Pro Football Focus has the o-line ranked 11th in the league. Silence. What were we just talking about? They digressed. Yeah, it was one of those kinds of weeks, where everyone goes to default complaints but there just wasn’t the same kind of fire that existed after the Panthers’ loss.
The other big headline? That Tom Brady has a sprained AC joint in his left shoulder. By this time we just brush off Brady injuries like they’re no big deal. Brady brushed it off. We brush it off. Do we take his toughness and durability for granted? Of course! But tying any injury, no matter how small, to the offensive line are just the dots that must be connected when you have 10 days off and hours upon hours of sports talk radio time to fill.
How do we feel about the Patriots right now? If we’re being honest with ourselves it does feel like it’s off to another injury apocalypse year like 2013 started out and 2015 became. But it’s still early so no one should be abandoning ship just yet, but keeping the remaining roster healthy, especially 12, 87, 80 and 54 is critical to any Super Bowl aspirations.
In some ways it feels like the Pats are under the radar. I like how Kurt Warner put it, the Pats aren’t the favorites in the AFC, they’re the favorites to upset the favorites. That sounds about right. Still, the real football season is just starting and that’s always when the Patriots start to roll.
This week has been a soft reset. The defense didn’t look lost against the Bucs and the offense showed more explosiveness. Both ran out of gas at the end to make the game interesting, but it’s hard to kill them for that on a Thursday night on the road.
So now we get back to business against a Jets team that could field 22 high school JV players and still play the best Patriots team close in mid-October in the Meadowlands. For whatever reason, that’s just always how it seems to go unless it’s the rare exception like the Buttfumble game.
What do the Pats have to do to get their first divisional win and get the Patriots hype train back on track? Here’s the gameplan.
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